B.C. tech start-up goes under the hood to give drivers their data

A Vancouver based technology company is rethinking the way people interact with their cars.

Mojio is making driving a lot smarter — in the technological sense.

With little more than a cell phone and a dongle that attaches to the car’s OBDII port, drivers can now get access to all of their data. Everything from acceleration and braking information to GPS and diagnostics.

The market potential is enormous, but the resources to capitalize on it have been difficult to come by.

Mojio is like a lot of Vancouver startups. In order to scale rapidly, they have been forced to relocate large parts of the business to Silicon Valley.

According to the BC Tech Association, that is one of the biggest challenges facing the tech industry in the province.

A recent KPMG report ranked B.C. as the best place in Canada to launch a startup, but there are a couple of issues that are holding the industry back from growing small companies into large economic engines.

Recruitment and retention of staff has been a constant issue in the industry.

“Historically our failure to scale has come as a failure of capital. We just didn’t have enough money,” said BC Tech Association CEO Jill Tipping.